She cut off a strand of her hair.
"I do no know what I shall do," she said to him, "but promise me if I die, never to forget my children.
Whether you are far or near, try to make them into honest men.
If there is a new revolution, all the nobles will have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate, because of that peasant on the roof who got killed.
Watch over my family.
Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear.
These are our last moments.
Having made this great sacrifice, I hope I shall have the courage to consider my reputation in public."
Julien had been expecting despair.
The simplicity of this farewell touched him.
"No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this.
I will leave you now, as you yourself wish it.
But three days after my departure I will come back to see you at night."
Madame de Renal's life was changed.
So Julien really loved her, since of his own accord he had thought of seeing her again.
Her awful grief became changed into one of the keenest transports of joy which she had felt in her whole life.
Everything became easy for her.
The certainty of seeing her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy.
From that moment, both Madame de Renal's demeanour and the expression of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.
M. de Renal soon came back. He was beside himself.
He eventually mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had received two months before.
"I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it has been sent by that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the gutter and made into one of the richest tradesmen in Verrieres. I will disgrace him publicly, and then I will fight him.
This is too much."
"Great Heavens!
I may become a widow," thought Madame de Renal, and almost at the same time she said to herself, "If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be the murderess of my own husband."
She had never expended so much skill in honoring his vanity.
Within two hours she made him see, and always by virtue of reasons which he discovered himself, that it was necessary to show more friendship than ever to M. Valenod, and even to take Elisa back into the household.
Madame de Renal had need of courage to bring herself to see again the girl who was the cause of her unhappiness.
But this idea was one of Julien's.
Finally, having been put on the track three or four times, M. de Renal arrived spontaneously at the conclusion, disagreeable though it was from the financial standpoint, that the most painful thing that could happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of the effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrieres, should stay in the town as the tutor of Valenod's children.
It was obviously to Julien's interest to accept the offer of the director of the workhouse. Conversely, it was essential for M. de Renal's prestige that Julien should leave Verrieres to enter the seminary of Besancon or that of Dijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he going to live?
M. de Renal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the distance, was in deeper despair than his wife.
As for her, she felt after this interview in the position of a man of spirit who, tired of life, has taken a dose of stramonium. He only acts mechanically so to speak, and takes no longer any interest in anything.
In this way, Louis XIV. came to say on his death-bed,
"When I was king." An admirable epigram.
Next morning, M. de Renal received quite early an anonymous letter.
It was written in a most insulting style, and the coarsest words applicable to his position occurred on every line.
It was the work of some jealous subordinate.
This letter made him think again of fighting a duel with Valenod.
Soon his courage went as far as the idea of immediate action. He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and got some pistols which he loaded.
"Yes, indeed," he said to himself, "even though the strict administration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become fashionable again, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery to reproach myself with; at the outside, I have shut my eyes, and I have some good letters in my desk which authorise me to do so."
Madame de Renal was terrified by her husband's cold anger. It recalled to her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had so much trouble in repelling.
She closeted herself with him. For several hours she talked to him in vain. The new anonymous letter had decided him.
Finally she succeeded in transforming the courage which had decided him to box Valenod's ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to Julien, which would keep him for one year in a seminary.
M. de Renal cursed a thousand times the day that he had had the ill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and forgot the anonymous letter.
He consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not tell his wife. With the exercise of some skill, and by exploiting the romantic ideas of the young man, he hoped to be able to induce him to refuse M. Valenod's offer at a cheaper price.
Madame de Renal had much more trouble in proving to Julien that inasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six hundred francs a year in order to enable her husband to keep up appearances, he need have no shame about accepting the compensation.
But Julien would say each time, "I have never thought for a moment of accepting that offer.
You have made me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of those people would kill me."
Cruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand.